Twi, The Preferred Language At Mantse Agbona

Lens -- The NPP's extremely repugnant tribal agenda, was given a further lease of life when as expected, Twi was made the preferred language at no other place than right at the forecourt of the James Town Chief's Palace popularly known as Mantse Agbona. The NPP tribal agenda is being pursued with vim and vigour to the utter polarization of the country.

Interestingly, the occasion was at the so-called launch of the NPPs campaign in Accra, the third such campaign launch in a matter of weeks. The NPP had previously launched its campaign first at Cape Coast and then in Kumasi. But upon realizing that they have virtually lost the support of Gas because of the way the NPP has slighted them after riding on their votes to victory in the 2000 election, coute que coute, a launch must be done in Accra.

The NPP ever since it got the mandate to rule has made a deliberate attempt at making Kumasi in general and Manhyia in particular the defacto seat of government. Visitor after visitor to the country, after visiting the president at the castle, have either on their own volition visited Manhyia or have been compelled by the "system" so to do. So arrogantly have they gone about their Ashanti agenda that it is not uncommon to hear Ghanaians say that Kufuor has ceded his number one position to the Asantehene such that the latter has assumed the presidency of the country whilst Kufuor is just the leader of government business.

Unlike in previous times when all traditional rulers were involved in matters concerning the state and with the Ga chiefs given the due recognition mainly because the seat of government is situated on Ga land, the NPP government has displayed a total disregard for the Gas and their chiefs.

So annoyed were ordinary Gas when the NPP chose to make Twi the lingua at Mantse Agbona that despite the fact that the rally was organized to hopefully claw back some lost Ga votes, their unwise decision to put the Twi language in the fore and relegate Ga to the background has caused them more harm than good.

Not only did the NPP confirm their disregard for the Ga's by their action, but chose to do it right under their noses when speaker after speaker, including the NPP MP for the area Reginald Niibi Ayibonte, spoke in Twi.

It will be recalled that after snubbing the Ga chiefs for the last three years the NPP, for reasons of trying to win votes in Accra, gave forty million to the chiefs for the celebration of this years Homowo, an act that did not sit well with ordinary Ga's since they considered it an insult

The question that most of the folks around James Town were asking is this what will happen if a rally could be held at the forecourt of Manhyia and Ga or Ewe were made the preferred language instead of Twi? Yet another school of thought was of the view that knowing very well that the Gas will not change their minds about voting the NPP out, they chose to address the Twi speaking shoeshine boys and dog chain sellers who gathered to listen to them.

The NPP's disregard and disrespect for Gas is also manifest in the fact that the first ever person from the UP tradition to win the Osu seat for the NPP, Lawyer Adu Mante, was not made even a deputy minister of state while the likes of Isaac Amoh and S O Darko have been pushed out of the way to make room for Ashanti's to contest their seats all in a bid to expand the Ashanti frontier. Of course Jake Obetsebi Lamptey himself got thrown out of the castle to make way for Kojo Mpiani

This gargantuan faux pas by the NPP in insulting Gas as well as the uneducated revelation at the rally by Kufuor that there was no way he would visit Yendi until the Ya-Na has been buried, just goes to point to the fact that in the face of imminent defeat Kufuor and his strategists are so confused that their thought processes have been completely frozen hence the monumental goofing and gaffing that they are burying themselves under